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South Korea Approves Free Trade Pact With U.S.

SEOUL — Members of President Lee Myung-bak’s governing party, coughing from tear gas sprayed by an opposition legislator, rammed a free-trade agreement between South Korea and the United States through Parliament on Tuesday, ratifying a deal that has sharpened a political divide between the government and the opposition and between big business and voters unhappy with deepening economic inequality.

Lawmakers of the governing Grand National Party caught the opposition by surprise by calling a snap plenary session. Opposition legislators rushed in but were too late to prevent their rivals from putting the bill to a vote.

In a desperate attempt, one opposition lawmaker detonated a tear gas canister, throwing the National Assembly chamber into chaos. A scuffle erupted, but members of the governing party outnumbered their foes and, while sneezing and wiping tears, passed the deal in a vote of 151 to 7. In the 299-seat National Assembly, 170 members showed up for the vote Tuesday, most of them governing party lawmakers. The opposition members either voted against the bill or abstained.

Glass doors were shattered as legislative aides from the opposition parties tried to barge in, and security guards formed a human barricade.

“The legislators were passing a bill which will make ordinary people shed bitter tears,” Kim Sun-dong, a member of the small opposition Korea Democratic Labor Party, told a crowd of supporters on Tuesday night, explaining why he had sprayed tear gas. “So I detonated tear gas so that they too shed tears, even if theirs were fake tears.”

Thousands of activists marched down an eight-lane boulevard in downtown Seoul late Tuesday, calling the parliamentary vote a “violation of democracy” and pledging to punish those who voted for the bill in next April’s general election. Police officers fired water cannons to disperse them.

The government had urged quick approval of the deal, first signed in 2007 but long unratified by either country, arguing that it would help the economy grow. It also said the deal would lessen South Korea’s dependence on trade with China and deepen its alliance with the United States at a time of growing military threats from North Korea.

The opposition argued that the deal would fatten the pockets of big export companies, which dominate the economy, while depriving farmers and small merchants of their livelihoods. Amid widespread distrust of big business and resentment of what is seen as increasing economic inequality, such fears have led thousands of farmers and labor activists to hold almost daily protest rallies outside the Parliament building. In occasional clashes, the police fired water cannons at protesters to stop them from entering Parliament.

Photo

An opposition lawmaker detonated a tear gas canister near the chairman's seat at Seoul's National Assembly on Tuesday.Credit
Yonhap/Reuters

“The government will actively pursue measures for farmers and smaller business owners to help improve their competitiveness,” said Choe Guem-nak, the president’s spokesman. “We will also make sure that the free trade agreement will rejuvenate the economy and above all, create jobs for young people.”

Mr. Lee’s rapport with President Barack Obama bore fruit last month when the U.S. Congress passed the free-trade deal by a wide margin despite underlying concerns about the effect it might have on U.S. manufacturing, notably the car industry. The deal was approved by Congress while Mr. Lee was visiting Washington.

“This was an inevitable action we had to take, because we could not make one step of progress in our talks with the opposition, which thought only about its partisan interest,” Kim Ki-hyun, a governing party spokesman, said of the hurried vote. “But we apologize to the people for failing to have a negotiated approval of the deal.”

“We apologize to the people for failing to stop this coup,” said Sohn Hak-kyu, head of the main opposition Democratic Party. “From now on, we will fight to have the deal nullified.”

Farmers’ groups across the country issued statements accusing the government of “giving up our economic sovereignty.”

The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry said in a statement welcoming the bill’s approval that the deal would “pave an economic highway” to the United States and make South Korea a trading hub for Asia, Europe and North America.

South Korea, a major exporter of industrial goods like automobiles and consumer electronics, has aggressively sought free-trade deals and has several in effect, with countries including Chile, India, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the European Union. South Korea hopes the deal with the United States will go into effect Jan. 1, said Cho Byung-jae, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

After Mr. Obama signed the U.S. side of the South Korean agreement into law, Mr. Lee’s government has felt the pressure to get it ratified here, too. But weeks of negotiations became bogged down in squabbling over technicalities few ordinary South Koreans could understand.

The governing and opposition camps both admitted that it had become politically impossible to reach a compromise, especially after the opposition rejected Mr. Lee’s offer last week that his government would renegotiate a key sticking point if the opposition first ratified the trade deal.

A violent clash was inevitable, given the parties’ penchant for resorting to physical confrontations to railroad measures through Parliament. The rival parties focused on how to use such a clash to create a favorable impression for themselves before parliamentary and presidential elections next year.

Government economists believe that the free-trade deal could increase trade between South Korea and the United States, tallied at $90 billion last year, by as much as a quarter.

The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates that the deal will lift U.S. exports to South Korea as much by as $10.9 billion in its first year of full effect. The deal is the biggest U.S. trade pact since the North America Free Trade Agreement, which went into force in 1994.

The trade accord removes tariffs on almost two-thirds of U.S. farm exports and phases out duties on more than 95 percent of industrial goods within five years. It will help South Korea’s economy expand by 5.7 percent within a decade, according to government estimates. Automobile, electronics and chemical exporters will benefit the most, while the farming sector is expected to suffer a big loss in production.

The opposition wants better protection for farmers and the country’s nonmanufacturing industries. Kim Jin-pyo, floor leader of the Democratic Party, warned that the deal would “deepen the polarization of wealth.”

Both governments signed the deal in 2007, but lawmakers’ approval of it has been delayed by changes in governments in both countries and by U.S. demands that South Korea take steps to reduce an imbalance in auto trade. South Korea eventually compromised and addressed U.S. worries on cars through additional negotiations.

As Mr. Lee nears the last year of his five-year term, he faces declining popularity amid corruption scandals involving his former aides, concerns about deteriorating ties with North Korea and a widening wealth gap. But he is proud of the closer ties with the United States under his government — a relationship he wanted to reaffirm by having Parliament pass the trade bill.

He likes to cite surveys showing that a majority of South Koreans support the deal. But last month, a vocal critic of his policies, including the trade agreement, won the election for Seoul mayor. Young voters were frustrated over the lack of employment opportunities, although the country’s big businesses rake in huge profits through exports.

A version of this article appears in print on November 23, 2011, on page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: As Surprised Opponents Protest, South Korea Pushes U.S. Trade Pact Through Parliament. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe